The automation that's actually worth building
You spent 20 hours automating something you do twice a month.
Automation is seductive. The promise of "set it and forget it" pulls attention toward complex projects while simple, high-frequency tasks stay manual. The automation that matters isn't the cleverest - it's the one that saves the most time on the tasks that happen most often.
The scenario:
You want to identify and prioritise automation opportunities by actual ROI.
The prompt:
You're building an automation priority list.
Analyse your operations:
- List recurring manual tasks across the team
- Estimate frequency and time per occurrence
- Calculate annual time investment for each
- Rate automation feasibility (easy, medium, hard)
- Calculate ROI (time saved vs. time to build)
- Prioritise by ROI score
Create a ranked list of top 10 automation opportunities with estimated payback periods. Include a template for evaluating future automation ideas.